Combatants de Blasio and Trump meet for ‘respectful’ discourse

Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio went face-to-face with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday at Trump Tower to discuss critical city issues and the fear many New Yorkers feel about his proposals.

The 62-minute meeting was a “respectful” and “candid” discussion on such topics as the impact of tax cuts on infrastructure improvements, the ramifications a crackdown on undocumented immigrants and New Yorkers’ distress about the future of the nation, the mayor said.

“It was a respectful conversation, obviously with the acknowledgment we have very different views,” de Blasio said at a brief news conference following the meeting. “I told him what I believed, what I heard from my fellow New Yorkers.”

A year ago, Trump fueled a feud with de Blasio with a tweet calling him “The worst Mayor in the U.S., & probably the worst Mayor in the history of #NYC.”

Just last week, de Blasio called Trump “a racist con man who got rich by taking advantage of working people.”

On Election Day, New York City overwhelmingly supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The mayor told Trump that the tax cuts he proposes would pose a problem for the investments in infrastructure that he’s promised.

The mayor also said that a crackdown on undocumented immigrants and Muslim New Yorkers, of which there are 900 on the NYPD force, would undermine police-community relations as it would promote mistrust and avoidance.

“I gave him the perspective of the NYPD … (that) anything that would create a rift all over the country between our police and the communities they serve … would be counterproductive,” he added.

Trump and de Blasio did agree on one point —that the NYPD has done an exceptional job managing the unrest on the streets of the city following the election.

In regards to traffic conditions and security around 5th Avenue where protests continue, de Blasio said a news conference will be held Friday to discuss the strategy.

As of Tuesday, the Trump team appeared to double-down on the Trump campaign objectives of creating a national Muslim registry and building a wall at the Mexican border. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a prospective U.S. attorney general and member of the transition team, said the wall might be started immediately without congressional approval.